


did you hear my voice through the cracks in the walls?

by badritual



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Mixed feelings, Not Beta Read, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, References to Kylo Ren, difficult conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23299240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/pseuds/badritual
Summary: He hasn’t spoken with her since they returned from the final battle, bloodied and bowed yet unbroken.Finn and Rey have a long-overdue conversation.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren (mentioned)
Kudos: 6





	did you hear my voice through the cracks in the walls?

**Author's Note:**

> **Additional Notes:** I've been thinking about the state of Finn and Rey's friendship, post-TROS, and wanted to write them having a difficult conversation about their friendship and how Rey's connection to Kylo affected it, while adhering as close to canon as possible. If Finn and Rey remaining friends is not something you're interested in reading, please don't read this! If Rey having mixed feelings about Kylo and her bond with him is not something you want to read about either, please don't read this! I haven't read the novelization so this doesn't take any of it into account.
> 
> Title from "Difficult Conversations," by Columbus.

He hasn’t spoken with her since they returned from the final battle, bloodied and bowed yet unbroken. He tells himself it’s because they all need a moment to unwind, to unclench their jaws and loosen their fists and remind themselves that the war is finally over. There are battles yet to be fought—no one, least of all Finn, expects the remnants of the First Order to just roll over and die quietly—but they’ve earned a few moments of respite, at least.

When a day passes and they still haven’t spoken, he tells himself he’s too busy. Being a general in the Resistance requires a lot more paperwork than Finn had been expecting.

When a week passes and they still haven’t spoken, he realizes he’s going to have to break the ice sooner or later. But how do you speak to someone you’re not sure you really _know_ anymore?

Rey was well-trained in the Force, thanks to the efforts of General Leia. She knew how to use her abilities as a finely honed tool. Finn has only just begun to explore what being Force sensitive means for him, and what he can do. It wasn’t the kind of thing the First Order taught baby ’troopers during their morning lessons. 

Finn felt Rey die on Exegol. And he’d felt her rebirth too. He felt her _feelings_ toward Kylo Ren, a thick, twisted braid of confusion, fear, hatred, longing, and even love. 

Every time he reaches out toward her through the bond they share, he feels the thin, frayed threads of her bond to Kylo Ren. The cord between them had been snipped, but the strands remain. Eventually, he supposes, the connection will wither away completely. 

That bond is why he stays away. 

That Rey hasn’t reached out, herself, only helps widen the growing expanse between them. 

Finn is tossing and turning in his bunk when a sharp rap sounds on his bedchamber door.

“Come on in,” he calls out, sitting up and swinging his legs out from under his blanket. 

He expects it to be Poe, sleep-mussed and troubled, as it has been for the last several nights. Poe hasn’t been able to shake the nightmares.

Instead, Rey lingers in Finn’s doorway, unkempt hair spilling over bare shoulders. She’s wearing only a simple wrap around her chest and a pair of Resistance-issue fatigues. Rey looks like she’s seen a ghost—or several ghosts. 

“Rey?” Finn gets up, yawning, rubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t sleep,” she whispers, sounding almost ashamed of it. “Can I sit here with you?”

Finn opens his mouth, is about to fire off a smart-assed retort, when he stops himself. “Uh, sure.” 

Rey settles at the foot of Finn’s bunk and rests her hands in her lap. “I—I wanted to apologize,” she murmurs, as she smoothes her hands over her knees over and over, compulsively. 

“For what?” Finn asks, remaining standing. He leans against the wall and takes in the sight of her—slumped shoulders, bags under her eyes, sallow complexion. She looks terrible, as if she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since the war ended.

“For staying away,” Rey says, heaving a sigh. “I’ve not been a very good friend lately.”

Finn gets the sense that she wants him to reassure her that it isn’t true, but when he opens his mouth, only the truth comes out. “You haven’t,” he agrees. “You’ve been shutting us out. Shutting _me_ out.”

He pauses, waiting to see if she’ll open up to him now. He can still feel a barrier between them.

Rey rubs anxiously at the back of her neck. “I’m not sure you’d understand.”

“If you want to talk, I’ll listen,” Finn says, crossing his arms over his chest, “but I’m not going to argue or fight it out of you.”

Rey winces. “It’s hard to talk about,” she murmurs.

Finn sighs. “If you’re not ready to talk, then…”

Rey looks up, meeting his eyes for the first time all night—kriff, all _week_. “It’s about Ben—Kylo,” she admits. 

“I had a feeling,” Finn says, with a sigh. 

“You’re the only person I could think of talking to about this,” Rey rushes on, the words spilling out of her like a babbling brook. “You’re my best friend. But after what Ben and the First Order did to you…”

“You didn’t want to burden me,” Finn suggests.

Rey gives a stiff nod. 

“So you distanced yourself instead,” he says.

“I know it was wrong of me,” Rey says. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Did you consider it hurt more to think you didn’t want my friendship?” Finn asks.

She gives a slight shake of her head. “No, I guess not.”

Finn sighs, softening his stance, dropping his arms to his sides. “If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen. Or at least, I’ll try.”

Rey is silent for a few long moments before she starts talking to the backs of her hands.

“I kissed him,” she mumbles, shame reddening her cheeks. “I was dead. Truly, completely dead. Then, suddenly, I was alive again. And he was holding me in his arms. I kissed him because… I don’t know why. Everything came rushing at me like a tidal wave all at once. And kissing him felt like the right thing to do. Then he died, and I felt this tearing in my soul. Like half of it was ripped away.”

Finn turns his head away from her, unable to look at her any more. Not while she tells him this. It feels almost too intimate. Like something he shouldn’t be hearing. Something he doesn’t want to hear.

Rey continues on, her words as fragile as spun glass.

“I feel this emptiness in me still,” she says, clasping a hand over her chest. “And I don’t understand it. He did so many awful things. Killed and hurt so many people. People I cared about. But I don’t hate him. I can’t. I feel grateful that he saved my life. Regret that he died. And I hate myself for it.”

Finn doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know if he can say anything that will make this better—and doesn’t know if he even wants to. 

He waits, getting the sense she has more she wants to say.

“I look in the mirror and don’t recognize myself anymore,” she says, her voice swelling with emotion. Her hazel eyes are rimmed with unshed tears. “For the longest time, all I had was my hatred of him. Then it turned to something else. Something caught between fear and acceptance. Now it’s all gone. Like a limb’s been cut off.”

He knows all too well how it feels to lose something you’re not even sure you wanted to keep. Adjusting to life with the Resistance had taken a lot of work. Sometimes it’d felt too hard. It should have been so easy, and the fact it _wasn’t_ had left Finn feeling like he was being ungrateful. He’d tossed and turned many a night, unable to sleep, wondering why he felt so guilty that he sometimes longed for the familiarity of the First Order over the freedom and _home_ the Resistance offered.

“You have to figure out who you are now. Without him,” Finn says, his throat dry, the words sticking to his tongue thickly. “I can’t help you do that. Only you can.”

Rey nods, the tears finally slipping down her cheeks. “I know,” she says, reaching up and swiping the heel of her palm against her eyes. 

“Things are different now,” Finn adds, pulling her hand down from her face to give it a brief squeeze. “ _We’re_ different.”

“What are you saying?” Rey asks.

“I’ve spent the better part of a year running after you. And I’m tired,” Finn admits, rubbing his hands over his face. “This hasn’t felt like a true friendship in a long time.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Rey says, reaching out tentatively before laying her hand over Finn’s. “I want to be a better friend, though. I know I can be. If you want.”

Finn gives her a brief nod. He doesn’t want to let himself hope. “I miss that.”

“I do too,” Rey admits, giving his hand a squeeze. 

He squeezes back. There’s no harm in trying, at least. “I’m not promising anything,” he says. “But we can give it a shot.”


End file.
